Price Data
Hotspotting
info_outline
Building Collapses
Hotspotting
info_outline
Approvals V Construction
Hotspotting
Two very different headlines have summed up the problems for Australia’s ongoing housing shortage. One of the recent media headlines declared that building approvals were at a two-year high and that things were improving for the nation’s housing shortage. The other described why building approvals are almost irrelevant – it said that project deferrals are occurring at a record rate. The reality of the current crisis is this: it doesn’t matter how many houses and apartments are approved for construction – and it doesn’t matter how many re-zonings state governments push through...
info_outline
Webinar Replay: Reflections & Projections - A Deep Dive into Real Estate Trends & Forecasts
Hotspotting
In this insightful webinar, Terry Ryder, founder of Hotspotting, and Tim Graham, Hotspotting’s General Manager, analyze the surprises and trends of 2024 in the Australian property market and share their projections for 2025. With decades of combined experience, they provide investors with actionable advice on navigating the coming year. Key Highlights 2024 in Review Defying Predictions: Despite high interest rates and inflationary pressures, property prices rose by an average of 5.53% nationally in 2024. Perth led with an astonishing 18.7% growth, followed by regional Western Australia,...
info_outline
Best Buys Result
Hotspotting
You don’t have to be super rich or invest $1 million to make big capital gains in residential real estate: you just need to follow Hotspotting’s signature report, the National Top 10 Best Buys report. Those who followed the tips in our report of a year ago could have made close to $100,000 in capital gains spending as little as $400,000 – or $180,000 in gains after investing $630,000. In December 2023 we published our National Top Best Buys reports for Summer 2023-34. Our top 10 locations for investors to consider covered a wide range of price points, from less than $300,000 and above $1...
info_outline
Listings Rise
Hotspotting
The greatest complaint heard most often in real estate across Australia is that there are plenty of buyers, but a shortage of listings. The number of properties for sale has been well short of the levels needed for a balanced market, particularly in the boom cities of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. But that is steadily changing. According to SQM Research, total listings of properties for sale nationwide grew 7.6% in November and are now more than 10% higher than a year ago. Perhaps most significantly, there were major rises in November in those three boom cities, with the...
info_outline
Media Absurdities
Hotspotting
Things are constantly changing in real estate nationwide but the one factor that never changes is this: we can always rely on news media to distort the facts and deliver a steady flow of misinformation to Australian consumers, all in the interests of attracting readership, with little regard for accuracy, honesty or fairness. The past week or so has been chockful of media nonsense. If you can believe the headlines, the national property boom is over, house prices are plunging, the rental boom is over and the North Queensland city of Townsville is a mining town. One of the constants of my...
info_outline
2025 Predictions
Hotspotting
Rumours of the death of ‘the national property boom’ are greatly exaggerated – especially since we didn’t have a national property boom in 2024. Rather, over the past 12 months, we have seen differing market cycles in many locations - as is the usual state of play in real estate throughout Australia. Strong property price growth was recorded in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane in 2024, but not in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Darwin or Hobart. Similarly, in the regional areas, there were declining and stagnating markets, as well as some where prices were showing good price...
info_outline
Regional Investment Boom
Hotspotting
Victoria’s real estate market is witnessing a significant shift as young first-home buyers increasingly seek affordable housing in regional areas. According to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), first-home buyer loans in Victoria soared to 4,202 in July – the highest number in nearly two years. This surge reflects growing confidence among young buyers and a trend towards exploring housing options beyond Melbourne. Nationally, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Regional Australia Institute report that the flow of people from cities...
info_outline
Units Beat Houses
Hotspotting
Hotspotting was among the first to identify and highlight the most significant change in the Australian real estate scene – the emerging trend which we document in the quarterly editions of the report titled The Rise and Rise of Apartments., published in association with Nuestar. This trend has turned upside down the dominant paradigm in real estate, that houses out-perform apartments on capital growth. There is now growing evidence that attached dwellings are mounting a strong challenge to houses. It has long been believed that land content was the big thing in driving...
info_outlineThere really is no realistic prospect of rental vacancies rising significantly any time soon, which is grim news for tenants in most parts of Australia.
Vacancy rates continue to be close to those historic lows that have become the norm in the past couple of years and I can’t see any way they will improve in the foreseeable future.
The politicians who have created this unprecedented shortage of rental properties are clueless about how to fix their mess – and most of their actions which impact on the situation make it worse, not better.
The latest data on vacancies nationwide – from one of the key sources, SQM Research - has the national vacancy rate at 1.3% in June, the same as it was a year ago. We still have capital cities with vacancy rates well below 1%, including Adelaide, Perth and Darwin.
That June vacancy rate was slightly up on the rate for May, but that’s attributed to seasonal factors.
Here’s what Louis Christopher, managing director of SQM Research and one of Australia’s most experienced and respected research analysts, says about the current situation and about the future of vacancy rates:
“Based on history, we have now reached the peak in rental vacancy rates for Winter. It is likely that, vacancy rates will now begin to tighten again and keep tightening until November.
“So far this year, we have recorded very similar vacancy rates compared to the same period in 2023.
“Overall, the national rental market remains in severe shortage and barring some exceptions, is not expected to materially soften out of the rental crisis for some years.”
So what does this mean for residential rents?
Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to continue rising at 10% or more per year.
While vacancies are set to remain dangerously low for some time, there is a ceiling beyond which rents can’t rise because to the capacity of tenants to pay.
Louis Christopher says: “Much of the structural rental shortage has now been priced into the rental market and so I do believe the days of 10-20% plus annual rental increases have come to an end.”
I agree. Tenants, who tend to have lower incomes, have had years of rising rents and they can’t keep paying more and more in rent, in times when they’re also paying more for food, electricity, petrol and other essentials.
But the situation of ongoing ultra-low vacancies does mean that rents won’t fall. They will remain at the current high levels for the foreseeable future.